Rebellious Rembrandt, Dutch explorer of the infinite

No one quite like him ... Man in Oriental Costume by Rembrandt. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Dutch painting of the 17th century is a miracle. It is also profoundly humble. It is striking how many pictures by Dutch artists, including Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan Steen, are physically small, bijou things. There was evidently a socially broad, even "middle-class" market for these paintings; and their styles and subjects are as modest as their presentation. Kitchen scenes, ice fairs, flowers in a vase – it is the everyday minuteness of Dutch art that fascinates. Vermeer takes it to the most poetic extreme, in his stilled metaphysical concentration on the most ordinary spaces and acts. But he is not the only Dutch realist who fascinates the eye. There is so much delight in the way a still life painter like William Claesz. Heda can imitate the look and feel of lemon peel, gold, oysters and glass.

I don't have the answers. I am still puzzling over what makes Rembrandt so original. But one thing is certain: he was a consciously rebellious artist. You see it in that early self-portrait where he stands far back from a canvas we cannot see, and prepares to take on the cosmos – the artist as explorer of the infinite.